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Blog Tour: Thoughts on Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world’s only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

This isn’t a standard review because, frankly, I’m bored of them and I don’t think I could write one for this book.

Good Omens is a big thinking book that I had a real battle with while I read it. Having never read anything by Terry Pratchett, I told advisement on which book to pick for this Terry Pratchett celebration blog tour.

Firstly; this book has a great story in it and the right level of nuts that I approve of in any book. An Angel and a Demon that are vague chums, end of the world happening in a small English village outside Oxford and a witch with a vague sense of the future working with her great-great-great- etc granddaughter. The idea is perfect and the blend of British humour that Pratchett is a champion of is the cherry on the cake. However, it is a Thinking book and I really do need that capital T on there. It’s smart in a way that if you’re not paying enough attention, you could miss it or just get rather confused.

Something I did like was the fact that you couldn’t tell that it was written by two people. It’s possibly one of the best examples on how a book should be written by dual authors. The work is seamless and, as a reader, this is exactly how you need it to be. Otherwise you end up having a preference for one authors’ “sections” over the others. These two author giants were clearly a match made in crazy literature Heaven.

Overall, Good Omens is too big a story to explain in a witty review. It was a bit of love/hate relationship whilst reading it because there were moments were I couldn’t put the book down and others when I wasn’t fussed about picking it up at all. Perhaps it was my mood rather than the book. I’m glad I’ve cracked my way into the world of Pratchett and would be interested to try something written solely by him and perhaps more fantasy in its genre. This book is probably as close to a contemporary novel by Pratchett as you can get.

Good sense of humour and an interesting look at humanity and faith but not the easiest of reads at times.

Check out the rest of the Pratchett blog tour, organised by the wonderful Serendipity Reviews, by following the hashtag #terrypratchettblogtour

As the Tiffany Aching series are aimed at the "young adult" market it could be that one of those maybe a little simplistic as a introduction to Terry Pratchett and Discworld. I would suggest one of the Night-watch series maybe better such as Guards, Guards.

I'd agree, I'm a huge fan of both Gaiman and Pratchett but didn't read Good Omens until last year and liked it but not as much as I love some of the other DIscworld books. I'd second the recommendation to give the Tiffany Aching books (starting with Wee Free Men) a go. Lots of people I know have loved them as a Pratchett introduction!